Debt Not Compensable

A Japanese company that caused an accident too great to compensate proved to be incompetent to recover its failure. The accumulation of cost consumed for decontamination of the land, reparation to evacuating people and dismantling broken nuclear reactors rose up to hundreds of billions of yen according to the research by Board of Audit of Japan. How much tax money will be pouring into this actually bankrupted company, called Tokyo Electric Power Company, with inappropriate policy leadership taken by the government of Japan?

The total money TEPCO and the government of Japan had poured into the recovery effort accumulated to ¥590 billions in the calculation of the Board, ¥345 of which were owed by TEPCO. The amount of money for dismantling broken reactors and controlling contaminated water amounted to ¥189 billions. TEPCO has already consumed over a hundred billions of Japanese yen for the system of purifying radioactively contaminated water that has not work well, underground frozen wall for blocking underground water flow that has not been frozen at all, and technological research and development for decontamination and water purification. Those examples above were operated with tens of billions of subsidy from the national government.

TEPCO estimated the total cost for decontamination and dismantling reactors as roughly ¥1 trillion after the accident in First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in 2011 and consumed ¥400 billions in the first year, only resulted in failures of consecutive leak of contaminated water. After the government decided to support TEPCO, the decontamination devise TEPCO had bought from French company did not work. Having wasted ¥70 billions, it is unclear how much money TEPCO is going to spend until it will be successful in dismantling the reactors.

The Board also found that the interest for compensation to the residents around First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant can be reaching the upper limit of ¥9 trillion. In that case, it will take thirty years to pay that debt back and its interest during that period will amount to ¥126 billions. Since the government will not demand return for the interest, that money will be paid by tax money from the people.

Teruaki Kobayashi, Deputy Conductor for Nuclear Energy and Location of TEPCO, recognized the positive effect of ineffective devices. “Devices were for keeping the power plant stable after the accident and not unnecessary. I think they worked,” told Kobayashi. Embarrassingly enough for Kobayashi, the devices stably worked in terms of irritating evacuated people, undermining credibility of Japanese technology and letting Japanese Prime Minister make lies to the world about situation of contaminated water still flowing out to the Pacific Ocean.